Forgetting SEO for a moment

Often customers call us asking how can we increase traffic to our website. How much do we have to pay for the SEO?

Our answer is: it depends.

Maybe SEO is not your main problem. First, let’s find our whether SEO will make a difference.

For example, a few months ago, we were approached by a new client who was convinced he needed more search engine traffic to his website. After initial website analysis we said, “No you don’t.You need a new web site.” And it’s not because we were trying to upsell more of our services. Not at all. In fact, we would gladly start working on SEO instead getting into the messy job of website redesign. However, there are cases when without redesign any SEO will be a waste of money and time.

Their site looked something like this (here’s screen shot in case the link does not work). Surprisingly, the website ranked fairly well, but it wasn’t generating many calls.

When people did call they had a lot of questions. People wanted to know where hegot his products and whether they were any good.So we rebuilt the site and immediately, to use the client’s words, the phonestarted ringing off the hook.

What’s more, the callers weren’t calling with questions, they were calling with orders.

The moral of this story is that you need to be honest with yourself about whether you need SEO or not. Here are a few question that will guide you:

Is your site good enough?

Is it unprofessional looking and downright ugly?An ugly or unprofessional-looking site won’t work well.Your site is your face to the world and if it looks like it was built by anamateur, it conveys the impression that your business is run by amateurs.

Would you buy from your site?

It doesn’t matter how much you optimize your site.If it doesn’t create the right impression, it won’t work.

One other important issue is usability. Have your grandma or 8 old child make a purchase of the website. Or perform any other action you expect your customers to perform such as find the right product, place the order or find your contact information. If they manage to do it on less than 15 seconds – you are in luck. We can move on to SEO. If not – we need to figure out what needs to be changed on the website.

There is no point bringing people to the site to get frustrated and leave.